Lives in Cricket No 9 - JH King

As I was due to take up an appointment as Administrator in the South Pacific, there was no further opportunity to see a memorable, courteous, professional personality, full of wisdom, patience and breeding, of whom I was always hearing in talks with George Geary, Ewart Astill (his biography calls out to be written), Alan Shipman, Aubrey Sharp, Tommy Sidwell, Gordon Salmon and Frank Bale when I came to know these contemporaries of his. Of King’s talent and achievement we are pointedly reminded in this comprehensive survey by Antony Littlewood, Professor of Classics at the University of Western Ontario, whose grammar school was that also of Albert Knight, with his liking for Classics, who played for England in Australia and wrote so discerningly of his friend, Jack King. One is of course left wondering, as with many of King’s contemporaries, what further feats King would have accomplished, although virtually past his prime of life – though able to score 205 in 1923 when fifty-two years old – had he not been engulfed by the 1914-18 War. Editor’s Note: Philip Snow played cricket regularly for Leicestershire’s Second Eleven in the thirties, captaining the side in 1936, 1937 and 1938. He was a member of the Colonial Administrative Service in the Pacific from 1937 to 1952, and was captain of the Fijian side which toured New Zealand in 1947/48, playing seventeen matches, five of which were retrospectively ruled first-class by the International Cricket Conference in 1988. He was the Fijian representative on the ICC from 1964 to 1994: in 1970 he was made an Honorary Life Member of MCC for his services to international cricket. His older brother, Charles, was a celebrated novelist, who became Lord Snow of Leicester in 1964 and a minister in the Wilson government of 1964 to 1966. Another brother, Eric, was a member of the ACS for many years and wrote several books on Leicestershire cricket. The first of these, published in 1949, was a model for many later county histories. Foreword 9